Tag: community

Honouring change, the time just after the Harvest season and the dawn of Winter. Samhain, Halloween, a Celtic festival where we honour the dead and connect with our ancestors and spirits. May 1st, the Day when the veils of the other worlds are the thinnest and our intuition and remembrance are at the for front. Remembering and reconnecting with that part of our lost selves. A time to reflect on our season of harvest, what came to fruition and bared fruit? What sacred seeds will you bring into this new season of hibernation and contemplation? Winter is slowly upon us here in the Southern Hemisphere and I am sitting in the void of what is, what has been, and what is being seeded.

Ritual roots our vast beings and connects us closer to our communal intentions. So today on this day of honouring and remembrance I honour the young maiden I once was, I greet the mother of all births I am becoming, I call to the maga and crone to bare gifts of insight and deep knowing.

A passage from my journal “Seeds Of Remembrance”

She journeyed far for this feeling. Something engrained deep within drew her to the very place she is. This dance in the in between but seeking a place to land. A dream once dreamt and a vision so vast, her calling pulling her soul for a dance. So young her maiden vessel but how ancient her soul had become. Living in a world of parallel universes, always dreaming of what is to come and longing to travel to far away lands.

Which route truly resonated to her souls calling? Hidden and enclosed to the powerful force of the outside world she became curious. She was born into the wolf pack and initiated as the leader. But soon after her calling grew stronger, it was time to leave the pack.
Now turning to a life led by curiosity and her seeds of remembrance, she is able to journey outside of her boundaries. Like a gift from the goddess grotto she is now able to drum to the earths heart beat. This art of flight opened the unseen within. As she stepped into her radiant orb, she was swept off her feet only to be led by trust. Months go by and a new sensation grew stemming from the soles of her feet. Roots had begun to penetrate out from beneath her and her sense of home pulled at her wild soul. An unfamiliar feeling began to grow and she new it was time to land. Seeds need soil in order to grow and so it was she did too. A new place to begin that stemmed deep from within, she is following her calling and gathering her new wolves in.

May this post offer wisdom and insight to accessing your sacred seeds within and celebrate this beautiful day of entering a new season!

This morning I sit, my mind meandering down old memories. I awake to the crisp dewy morning as I watch the steam rise from the earth and my first yawn blow out billows of smoke. The seasons are changing and days are growing colder. The dawn of Autumn, the cusp of winter. A Season for reflection, to harvest. How powerful and heart opening this journey is. Be raw, be the wounded soldier within just for a moment, but do remember how grateful moments like these are. A time to honour the seasons within and without.

What if instead of setting our intentions every year in January, we had this season of reflection, Autumn, to firmly set these goals in motion? In this cycle, we are supposed to reflect on ourselves, let what needs to fall fall back into the earth. Trees and plants spread their seeds, so why don’t we? If we could sit with this letting go of the old and reflect on what we would like to bring into this new cycle we will forever be growing.

How to welcome the change in seasons this Autumn?

Light a Candle

Tis the season for the sweet smell of burning bees wax! Lighting a candle also helps to call yourself present. I love to light candles as the days grown colder and darker.

2. Create your sacred space

What would it feel like to be cradled? Create that warm, nourishing space for yourself and go there from time to time to reflect and be with the wisdom within. My scared space changes from time to time and I almost enjoy creating it the most. I roll out my felted rug, gather my journals, books, pillows, blankets, sacred objects…

3. Journal

When you have settled into your sacred space, pull out your journal. What is alive in you at the moment? Write whatever arises down…sit with that a moment and play with creatively writing what “harvest…letting go…inward…” means to you. You may be called to reflect on your last season cycles, writing everything from emotions to events. After letting go of the old stories, write down your new intentions for the following seasons. Journaling for me is medicine, it is a straight portal to the wisdom that lies beneath our bones. Come back to this as often as you like.

4. Nourish

As the day grow colder, our bodies are needing more nurturing and warmth. Tea is sacred in this season and there is something about listening to the tea kettle blow and the crackle of fire. Herbs like, oatstraw, nettle, sage, rose, ginger, tulsi, linden and many more are just a few that I brew for nourishment. Tea is always your best friend and provides the mind, body, and spirit with everything you need at exactly the right time. Slow cooked meals are also vital as the day grow darker. Onions, leeks, roots, spices, broths, seaweeds, oils, beans are what is usually stewing in the kitchen for me. Most importantly, listen to your body and go slow! Enjoy slow meals with long mingling chatter with friends and family by the fire!

5. Gather

Make time to check up with each other, to hold each other, to laugh with one another, to tell stories and sing songs. As much as this season is an inward one, community is key! My spirit is always lifted after a beautiful gathering with friends and family sharing home cooked food! Create a gathering, whether is be a sister circle, a men craft night, or a shared potluck!

Enjoy the nourishment and sweet tenderness of fall and may all beings be blessed and honour their blessings!

A place to call home. A place you know will always be there. A place that makes your insides sing and lets your body feel comforted by the earth.

I have found this place, set in the hinterlands of byron bay, Brooklet to be exact. 160 acres of unknown and wild paddocks. My love, Eliot, his family, and I have just begun this journey of such a beautiful diverse life on a farm. She came to us, abandoned, wildly overgrown, but glowing with life! A river rushes around almost half of her, leaving little swimming hole gifts as she meanders around native trees.

About 1 year ago was when we had first came to visit the land. Overloaded with uncertainty and excitement at the same time we knew our lives were about to flow to a new heartbeat. I was certain this was the place I wanted to grow on and be with the ones I love, create and play on! As soon as I knew it, we were packed and headed to Australia. I never imagined, growing up so close with my family that I would be taking on a new adventure across the world with my partners family. Never did I dream to be a farmer and wake up to the rhythm of the land, and now suddenly this seed has been planted and I’m in pursuit of fruiting!

We dream to fill this land with love, make her sustainable, concrete, and build a community with all our loved ones. Our vision is to hold different workshops, gatherings, and implement all our knowledge into creating an organic farm that supports our community around us.

September. 22. 2016

Today we moved to The Nest!

After our 7 months of journeying through our inner bodies we are pure and ready for this day. She is still, but vastly alive, dark and holds the key to inner light. We have landed, thank you. Thank you mother nature, thank you elders of the land and the abundant wildlife. Tis a day of ABUNDANCE, the final eclipse and the equinox! Your here at the most divine timing! Your so daunting and WILD yet I feel so much stability and tranquility from your rhythm, your heartbeat.

How beautiful and astonishing our fist night was. Sharing our first meal together with no utensils sitting in circle on the living room floor. Watching the puppy race in circles Dreaming and scheming ideas and projects to come. A community? a Blacksmith? Wood shop? Art Studio? Only 1 day and we are deep in thoughts. I fell asleep in eliot arms to the smell of the camphor laurel fire we made down by the creek. Thank you fuego abuelita! How sweet her sounds were, welcoming the night animals, as she danced to eliot flute. And now to dream of the days to come!

After this new moon, I have felt raw and open sometimes a bit to much. Maybe this feeling comes because I had been living up at the Quail Springs community for two weeks learning about Permaculture and the stories from my elders.

6:15 the bells ding and sing, shortly after the roosters call… I wipe my crusty eyelashes and frosty boogers from my face and begin on my way. Just like the cycle of the medicine wheel, I started this unknown quest with a spark of inspiration and curiosity not knowing what the outcome might be. I awoke with the rich, winter sun and started my days meandering through the trickling spring towards the classroom yurt where we spent most our time. “Go and sing to the mountains…Go and sing to the moon..” swooned my ears as I walked towards the kitchen in the canyon and arrived to the chatter of the early birds signing to Elephant Revival and cooking away in the community yurt. It wasn’t until then I really understood the meaning to simplicity and being grateful for the natural world around me, my ancestors.

As the medicine wheel continues to spin, so does my cycle within and I began to play and creatively act on my inspirations for community and co creating with the natural world. This part within led me here to Quail Springs, a community in the heart of Quayama Valley, to learn the ways and roots of Permaculture. I am a seed here, beginning to absorb all at my finger tips. From Natural building to studying the patterns in nature it all starts from the curiosity within. I have never loved waking up so early to milk the mama goats!

There is a big part of this cycle that is miss-linked and broken, that is the connection with our ancestors. It is my honoring to connect back with the roots of the earth and help to connect the missed links thru simple steps. So simple as stories! Stories of the earth, for the earth and sharing these historical messages to the modern day messengers! It all starts from caring for the people and caring for the earth.

Feeling grateful and filled with so much inspiration is the purist love I can ask for. I feel as if I am a seed ball coated with so much fertile soil and information, ready to implement them in a land greater than myself! As I started my cycle as a seed, absorbing so many life downloads I grew and gained so many layers to begin rolling into my journey of sharing sacred stories!

The goats on their sunset strollMatthew Mckinney, one of my friends I met, signing sweet songs from stories!My Classroom!The Medicine Wheel we created the first day we were all together on the land.. right below an ancient piñon treeLearning the ways of the meandering river!a peak at a sweet cob home!The wood fired bath!singing thru the smokey mornings sun rays

I was raised by a family full of artists, nestled in a sweet home amongst the Santa Barbara Mountains. Sometimes I call myself a nomadic wander, because I am always in search of something greater than us! I have an ever-growing love for co-creation, community, and collaboration!

After having finished school, I felt this bursting sensation of freedom and endless amount of possibility, and thats when I really began to travel. From road tripping around Africa, Iceland, Europe, Australia, Mexico, and various other majestic places I have documented what its like to be on the road.

Being connected to the world of technology, has gratefully so enabled me to connect to like minded artists around the globe! As a photographer, what catches my eyes the most is life at each living moment. The real vignettes of love, travel, and life!

I am the divine and that I am. We are all powerful beings and when we become in-tune within ourselves we are at our innermost truth! Shiva, meaning thyself is the source to all life. Once you are able to quite the mind and go within, meditate, you are creating a powerful connection between your breath, mind, and body.

At this moment in time, I have felt the most alone and uncertain. I had made a big decision to not go to a 4 year college and instead ride the wave of life! That being said I have made my way to the most chaotic and energetic city of them all, Manhattan. Yes I did score the most unreal opportunity to work with IMG as a Model as well as pursue my love for photography and that brought on a lot of self discovery.

Leaving my nurtured nest I call home, Santa Barbara, I feel raw and exposed. It felt as if somebody ripped my heart and threw me to the wolves. The day I landed in New York I felt like I had no clue what I was doing and for that I was scared. My monkey mind likes to go on long adventures into the future, which leads to expectations and planning. let me tell you..I am not good at being patient and especially not good at staying in the present. I knew there was a way to cope with feeling homesick and being lost in this city, fully pushed out of my comfort zone which forces me to start planting my seeds and watching them grow. Whether its walking down a different street on my way home, trying a new yoga class, or going around tasting different chai teas in the city, I am making it work. Its all a process and I am learning that, my vision was that I would be working constantly and unable to tune into reality with my emotions. I would wake up early go to castings, do some tests and eventually start getting jobs, but as we all know patience is a virtue and rome wasn’t built in a day. And like I always do, I started falling into the rabbit hole of “what ifs? and “when will I get my next job?”…Its a whirlpool once it starts and its hard to stop the cycle.

Yes as I am writing this bored and sitting at home watching the snow fall from the sky and waiting for what is to come. My dream and vision isn’t to be sitting here in the city working for the rest of my life, but to be in a community surrounded by artists feeding each other with inspiration. I feel what is to come is meant to be and will fuel my creativity. As a photographer, a model, a human, or whatever I call myself, It is amazing to feel the connection within myself and that started from the feeling of being alone but growing from it.

Back to the Om Namah Shivaya, I am finding my true inner self as each day goes by. This mantra was presented to me at a yoga studio I stared going to here in the city, surly enough it was in my dreams because of the amount of times we had to chant it. “Om Namah Shivaya…Om Namah Shivaya…Om Namah Shivaya…Om Namah Shivaya..” over and over and over again until we truly could think of anything else than being in the present. Thats when I felt my inner self, so deeply rooted. Chanting, breath of fire, intentions, healing, this was all so new to me but really helped and still is helping me find my inner self.

This is the foundation of my long journey ahead and it starts by cultivating a strong base within that vibrates out and enlightens your path in the direction you may go. At the times when I feel so alone and uncertain about my career and choice of career, I tune into my spiritual self and discover it is all within. I have found Kundalini here and it is amazing. Its like nothing I have ever tried, yes you sit for an hour breathing into your belly and chanting like a crazy person and no you do not sweat or call this exercising. You exercise your mind and go within. I don’t really smoke and Ive never taken acid but this is the closest I will get. Kundalini is my high, it aligns me and connects my mind with my body.

Writing is my way of processing all the new that comes into my life lately and for those who feel so inclined to following along, I will be checking in and updating my where about for the next few weeks.

~We watch the sunset and the moonrise together, set the table and light the candles. A community that gathers for the enjoyment of the golden hour, laughing and sharing each others gifts. Ukeleles and flowers dangling from your hair is a must at this gathering. Submerse your feet in the bare earth below as you play and twirl in the crisp evening air, not afraid of dusting your hat or ripping your fairy dress. Each soul contributes to bringing something to the table, all handmade and of course organic!